This a long blog… but mandates the details. Politicians talk a good game, filled with fire and brimstone, when unexpected violent assaults stir the ire of their constituency. America was justifiably infuriated when mostly Saudi born terrorist-pilots, trained in Afghanistan, crashed seized-in-the-air civilian airliners into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. That was the beginning of the Afghan War that only ended at the beginning of the Biden administration, placing the original “training” perpetrators, the Taliban, back in power over Afghanistan.
The United States had vastly superior military technology, eyes-in-the-sky surveillance, at one point (not counting local military combatants that fought along side US forces) deploying almost 100,000 military troops … and lost. The drug trade ramped back up, women and girls were pushed out of their feeble educational system, fundamentalist culture repressed forms of dress and limited entertainment as those seen as enemies of the Taliban government were executed. Is history repeating itself in Gaza?
“Palestinian politics have been rife with divisions since the pursuit of an independent state began in the 1960s. But the national movement formally split—politically, geographically and strategically—after Hamas, an Islamist party, beat Fatah, a secular movement, in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections. Factional fighting erupted after the two parties failed to reach a power-sharing agreement. Hundreds died. The Palestinian Territories divided into two polities: Hamas ruled Gaza, and Fatah led the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank.” US Institute of Peace, June 25, 2019. There have been no elections in Gaza since, and the Hamas has since found a willing funding partner (and so much more) in Iran (which is backed by Russia).
Every now and again, Hamas, sometimes in concert with Iran’s surrogates in Lebanon (Hezbollah), has indiscriminately fired massive rocket barrages into Israel, leading to short-lived Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) charging into Gaza, inflicting damage but ultimately withdrawing to Israel and erecting what was believed to be strong walls against a potential Gazan incursion… but never completely subduing Hamas. The urban street fighting that taking Hamas completely out of Gaza would have required mandated the kind of high-risk urban warfare certain to kill thousands of IDF troops. No go. And after each Israeli military response into Gaza, Hamas reversed the global public relations high ground by showing Israeli destruction of clearly soft civilian targets in Gaza.
But despite recent online Hamas postings, showing their fighters in body armor practicing tearing down concrete walls and training for blitzkrieg tactics killing civilians and taking hostages, Israel seemed distracted by protests against PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to disempower his country’s judiciary, under his new ultra-rightwing coalition, with a heavy focus on dislodging Palestinian homeowners in the West Bank. Gaza wasn’t even an afterthought. Until… War!
The United States pledged full support for Israel, while private admonishing Jewish state to tread lightly in attacks against obvious civilian targets in Gaza, notably schools, hospitals and clearly civilian residential areas. Focused on freeing brutally kidnapped hostages and containing Hamas once and for all, PM Netanyahu pledged to kill all the Hamas leaders and soldiers. He informed over a million northern Gazans to flee southward for their safety. A huge call-up of IDF reservists plus those on active duty amassed on the Israel-Gaza border… and began a ground assault (supported by artillery, air and missile fire) aimed at cutting Gaza in half.
Despite an interim unity government, “Teflon” Netanyahu, currently being tried for corruption in Israeli courts, understood that his political life would be over unless, by some miracle, he could achieve a quick and satisfactory military victory over Hamas. What was worse: the inability of Gazans to escape their land, entirely was halted by Egyptians in the south turning them away… and the fact that Israel and the Mediterranean Sea formed Gaza’s remaining borders.
But many are asking, if Israel has never been able to tame and control Hamas before, what exactly is Netanyahu’s endgame? Clearly, Israeli intelligence failed to realize the power and likelihood of the Hamas attack. Would cutting off Gaza’s medical supplies, food, and water – plus taking out electrical power plants – be enough to cause Hama leaders and soldiers to surrender… and face almost certain death as Netanyahu promised? Local Israeli journalist (writing from Israel), Uriel Heilman contributed his opinion to the October 14th Los Angeles Times: Now, with over 360,000 Israeli military reservists mobilized and a possible ground war in the offing, what’s next? Among all those Israeli reservists and soldiers are friends of mine, children of friends, a brother. Are they going to be sent into Gaza to fight? To what end?
We’re not getting answers. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu famously avoids taking questions, especially from Israeli journalists, and most senior members of his Cabinet have been studiously avoiding the public all week… So let me ask these questions here… What are Israel’s objectives in this war?
None of the past Israel-Hamas wars succeeded in dealing Hamas a mortal blow. On the contrary, Hamas was able to reconstitute and rearm itself every time, even if it took several years. This was the case after the summer of 2014, when Israel last sent ground troops into the Gaza Strip… It’s easy for Israeli officials to vow that Hamas will be destroyed, as Netanyahu has, but is that goal achievable? If so, why wasn’t it achieved before?
Surely Hamas has been preparing for an Israeli ground incursion. Its fighters succeeded in surprising the Israeli army in its own territory on Saturday; they must have more terrible surprises in store for Israeli forces on their home turf in Gaza… That’s not to say the likelihood of Israeli casualties should stop Israel from invading Gaza. If an Israeli incursion will achieve security for Israel, the Israeli government must consider it. And the international community should wholeheartedly support the destruction of Hamas, which oppresses and kills Palestinians in addition to killing Israelis.
But will the hurried deployment of the blunt instruments of war actually achieve long-term security for Israel? Will reducing Gaza to rubble — as the Israeli military may be preparing to do with its order Friday [10/13] that 1.1 million Palestinians evacuate northern Gaza — solve the problem? Are there no other, more effective ways to neutralize Hamas that Israel hasn’t yet tried? Is there no more effective approach that combines military solutions with political ones?...
I don’t have the answers. But what seems certain to me is that a hastily assembled Israeli invasion of Gaza or the flattening of the strip with massive bombardment will seal the hostages’ terrible fate and leave thousands more Israelis and Palestinians dead, especially given Hamas’ propensity to use Palestinians as human shields.
And what of the hostages? The dead cannot be brought back, but the hostages’ fate has not yet been sealed. Will Israel’s leaders seek to bring them home?... This is not a rhetorical question. Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the right-wing Religious Zionist Party, said Saturday [10/7] night that the Israeli army should “hit Hamas brutally and not take the matter of the captives into significant consideration.” This is the same man who in March called for Israel to “wipe out” the West Bank Palestinian town of Huwara following a Palestinian terrorist attack in which two Israelis were killed… Is the callousness of this extremist the hand that guides Israeli policy? Is Israel more interested in killing enemies than in rescuing its own children?...
I can’t help but ask this last question of Netanyahu, the man under whose watch Israel experienced the deadliest day in its history; who appointed as national security minister a right-wing zealot, Itamar Ben-Gvir, so extreme that the Israeli army turned him away from mandatory military service; whose government failed to stem a surge of Palestinian terrorist attacks from the West Bank and then looked the other way when West Bank settlers rampaged through Palestinian towns to avenge those attacks; who pushed through the passage of judicial reform legislation that has torn the country apart; who for years has stoked division, hatred and fear among the people of Israel… Isn’t it enough already?
In the end, there are no good answers, no obvious winners except maybe Iran showing its power to disrupt (despite denying involvement). Virtually all of the Palestinian civilians living in Gaza are innocent, geographically trapped in a failed economy under a brutal and callous Hamas leadership that treats civilians as valueless pawns. A 46% pre-war unemployment rate tells you all you need to know about what Gazan life was like before this war. The Mediterranean and tunnels from Egypt have been the dangerous supply routes into Gaza, despite Egyptian and Israeli efforts to monitor and contain these supply routes. This will not end well.
I’m Peter Dekom, and there is more than enough anger to go around, justifying unlimited armed responses from both sides… but the civilians on both sides will suffer as pawns in a never-ending struggle that Iran, Syria and Russia make sure never gets fixed.
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